NEW: Journal of Greek Archaeology: Subscriptions and Back-IssuesOne volume published annually in October/November edited by John Bintliff (Ed. in Chief). ISBN 2059-4674-HOME.

An annual, international peer-reviewed English-language journal specializing in synthetic articles and in long reviews. The scope of this journal is Greek archaeology both in the Aegean and throughout the wider Greek-inhabited world, from earliest Prehistory to the Modern Era. Thus we include contributions not just from traditional periods such as Greek Prehistory and the Classical Greek to Hellenistic eras, but also from Roman through Byzantine, Crusader and Ottoman Greece and into the Early Modern period. Outside of the Aegean contributions are welcome covering the Archaeology of the Greeks overseas, likewise from Prehistory into the Modern World. Greek Archaeology for the purposes of the JGA thus includes the Archaeology of the Hellenistic World, Roman Greece, Byzantine Archaeology, Frankish and Ottoman Archaeology, and the Postmedieval Archaeology of Greece and of the Greek Diaspora. the Editorial Board is headed by Professor John Bintliff (Edinburgh University, U.K. and Leiden University, The Netherlands).A full mission statement and information on the editorial and advisory board is available here.

In the United States of America, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires that projects funded, authorized, or permitted by the federal government consider historic properties that may be affected by the development of those projects. To comply with Section 106, an interstate pipeline corridor in southwestern Wyoming and northwestern Colorado was surveyed to identify cultural resources and to evaluate them in terms of significance and potential listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Once sites were identified, a mitigation strategy was developed in coordination with the Bureau of Land Management. That plan prioritized important cultural resources within a regional archaeological context and included substantial excavations at 14 sites.

The archaeological excavations were successful in recovering the types of data necessary to address regional research issues that were raised in the project’s alternative mitigation plan. The data recovery effort included site-specific geophysical assessments as well as providing an opportunity to analyze the geology, fauna, flora, and tens of thousands of prehistoric and historical artifacts from the sites. While there is nothing about the number of artifacts that inherently adds to our understandings of past lifeways, the analyses substantially added to regional datasets for the Paleoindian, Archaic, Formative, Protohistoric, and Historical components. Specifically, the analyses addressed prehistoric chronometric and settlement patterns (Chapter 5), subsistence strategies (Chapter 6), lithic reduction strategies (Chapter 7), as well as synthesizing information for prehistoric hearths (Chapter 8) and architecture (Chapter 9). Chapter 10 focuses on the results of remote sensing at two sites. That is followed by regional syntheses of the prehistoric (Chapter 11) and historical data (Chapter 12). When combined with existing datasets, this synthetic work substantially improves the quality of regional archaeological interpretations. Given the results presented herein, it is clear that the mitigation approach within the pipeline corridor was successful in providing important archaeological information that advances local and regional understandings of past lifeways.

About the EditorMatthew Landt has more than 20 years’ archaeological experience across the western and central United States. He has authored publications in regional and national journals and actively pursues the presentation of archaeological data to the public. He has worked at Alpine Archaeological Consultants since 2007. Alpine has provided cultural resource services for a wide variety of projects since their founding in 1988. During the past 30 years, they have completed numerous local, regional, and interstate projects and have a broad region of expertise, covering the Great Plains, Mountain West, Great Basin, and the Greater Southwest.

This volume presents proceedings from sessions A15a, A15b, A15c of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September 2014, Burgos, Spain). The sessions covered are: ‘Archaeological Heritage Policies and Management Strategies’, where international management models focused on legislation, public policies, management systems, and institutional contexts for research were presented; ‘Management and use of science data from preventive archaeology: quality control’, where reflections on the range of quality control in projects of applied science, including environmental topics and social standards were developed; ‘Cultural resources, management, public policy, people’s awareness and sustainable development’, which focused on local traditional crafts, many of which exist continuously from prehistory to the present day. Collectively this volume presents perspectives of archaeological heritage management in various countries and continents. It is hoped, through this, to contribute to the exchange of experiences, the sharing of solutions, and the broadening of Archaeology’s role in the sustainable development of people.

South Yorkshire and the North Midlands have long been ignored or marginalized in narratives of British Prehistory. In Remembered Places, Forgotten Pasts, largely unpublished data is used for the first time in a work of synthesis to reconstruct the prehistory of the earliest communities across the River Don drainage basin. The author uses a relational approach to account for the complex and sophisticated interaction between people and materiality. Monuments and material culture are considered together, in relation to the diverse landscapes across which they were deposited in the distant past. The memory of significant places along lines of movement are central to the approach taken, combined with the changing character of the land which supported people. Virtually absent in recent narratives, the forgotten prehistoric pasts of the region are now able to be approached on a systematic basis. The author concludes that a region that was the centre of dynamic interaction between mobile groups in its earliest phase gave way to a pastoral lifestyle facilitated by extensive wetlands. These wetlands were connected by waterways and gorges. Thus connected, the wetlands were located to either side of its drier, centrally defining feature, the Magnesian Limestone ridge.

The Cutting Edge: Khoe-San rock-markings at the Gestoptefontein-Driekuil engraving complex, North West Province, South Africa by Jeremy Charles Hollmann. xx+394 pages; illustrated throughout in colour and black & white. 40 2017 Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 97. Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781784917036. £60.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784917043.

This book addresses the rock engravings on the wonderstone hills just outside Ottosdal, North West province, South Africa. Wonderstone is remarkable rock that is smooth, shiny and very easy to mark. The wonderstone occurs only on two adjacent farms, Gestoptefontein and Driekuil, and thus the rock art on the wonderstone outcrops is referred to as the Gestoptefontein- Driekuil complex (GDC). This rock art is now the only remaining trace of what must once have been a much larger complex of engravings. Sadly, much of the rock art has been destroyed in the course of mining activities, with very few records. The largest remaining outcrop is still threatened by potential mining activities. The study attempts to bring this disastrous and unacceptable situation to the attention of the public and the heritage authorities, who have so far failed to respond to applications to grant the sites protection. It therefore has two main aims: to locate and record as much of the rock art as possible and to understand the significance of the outcrops in the lives of the people who made them.

Based on the rock art itself, as well as what little historical evidence is available, it is argued that the rock art was made by Khoe-San people during the performance of important ceremonies and other activities. The rock art has two main components: engravings of referential motifs and a gestural, or performative, element. The referential motifs depict a range of things: anthropomorphs and zoomorphs, decorative designs, items of clothing, as well as ornaments and decorations. The gestural markings were made by rubbing, cutting and hammering the soft wonderstone, probably in the course of a range of activities that people carried out on the outcrops.

This book provides a comparative study of the earliest urban civilisations of the Maya lowlands and the Greek mainland. The focus lies on the art styles of the Late Preclassic lowland Maya and Mycenaean Greece. Building on research from previous comparative studies, the approach used here seeks to combine more traditional iconographic approaches with more recent models on metaphor and the social agency of things. By comparing Maya and Mycenaean art styles through the three aspects of metaphor, semiotics and praxis, their differences and similarities are made clear. The book shows art to have played a more active role in the development of the earliest urban civilisations, rather than passively reflecting economic and political trends. In that way, the social role of art provides a key to understanding the relations between the different factors in the development of the two societies, as they played out at different temporal and geographical scales. To understand this, the notion of distinct Maya and Mycenaean ‘material worlds’, involving both materials and ideas, is proposed, with consequences for models about the earliest urban civilisations in general.

The Hunting Farmers: Understanding ancient human subsistence in the central part of the Korean peninsula during the Late Holocene by Seungki Kwak. xii+118 pages; illustrated throughout in colour and black & white (45 colour plates). 37 2017. Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781784916756. £28.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784916763.

The transition from foragers to farmers and the role of intensive rice agriculture have been among the most controversial subjects in Korean archaeology. However, the relatively high acidity of sediment in the Korean peninsula has made it impossible to examine faunal/floral remains directly for tracing the subsistence change. For this reason, many of the studies on the transition heavily relied on the shell middens in coastal areas, which reflect only a small portion of the overall subsistence in the Korean Peninsula. The subsistence behaviors recorded in numerous large-scale inland habitation sites have been obscured by the overall separation between hunter-gatherer and intensive rice farmer. This research investigates the role of intensive rice farming as a subsistence strategy in the central part of the prehistoric Korean peninsula using organic geochemical analysis and luminescence dating on potsherds. The central hypothesis of this research is that there was a wide range of resource utilization along with rice farming around 3,400-2,600 BP. This hypothesis contrasts with prevailing rice-based models, where climatically driven intensive rice agriculture from 3,400 BP is thought to be the dominant subsistence strategy that drove social complexity. This research focuses on four large-scale inland habitation sites that contain abundant pottery collections to evaluate the central hypothesis as well the prevailing rice-centred model. This research produced critical data for addressing prehistoric subsistence in the Korean peninsula and established a detailed chronology of subsistence during 3,400-1,800 BP.

Access Archaeology:This imprint is designed to make archaeological research accessible to all and to present a low-cost (or no-cost) publishing solution for academics from all over the world. Material ranges from theses, conference proceedings, catalogues of archaeological material, excavation reports and beyond. We provide type-setting guidance and templates for authors to prepare material themselves designed to be made available for free online via our Open Access platform and to supply in-print to libraries and academics worldwide at a reasonable price point. Click here to learn more about publishing in Access Archaeology.

At the Unai Bapot Site of the Mariana Islands, new excavation has clarified the oldest known instance of a residential habitation prior to 1500 B.C. in the Remote Pacific, previously difficult to document in deeply buried layers that originally had comprised near-tidal to shallow subtidal zones. The initial habitation at this site, as well as at others in the Mariana Islands, pre-dated the next Remote Oceanic archaeological evidence by about four centuries and in an entirely different part of the Pacific than previously had been claimed. The newest excavation at Unai Bapot in 2016 has revealed the precise location of an ancient seashore habitation, containing dense red-slipped pottery, other artefacts, food midden, and arrangements of hearths, pits, and post moulds in three distinguishable archaeological layers all pre-dating 1100 B.C. and extending just prior to 1500 B.C. The new discoveries are presented here in detail, as a substantive basis for learning about a rarely preserved event of the initial cultural inhabitation of a region, in this case in the Remote Oceanic environment of the world with its own set of unique challenges.

Access Archaeology:This imprint is designed to make archaeological research accessible to all and to present a low-cost (or no-cost) publishing solution for academics from all over the world. Material ranges from theses, conference proceedings, catalogues of archaeological material, excavation reports and beyond. We provide type-setting guidance and templates for authors to prepare material themselves designed to be made available for free online via our Open Access platform and to supply in-print to libraries and academics worldwide at a reasonable price point. Click here to learn more about publishing in Access Archaeology.

Recycling is a basic anthropological process of humankind. The reutilization of materials or of ideas from the Past is a process determined by various natural or cultural causes. Recycling can be motivated by a crisis or by a complex symbolic cause like the incorporation of the Past into the Present.

What archaeology has not insisted upon is the dimensional scale of the process, which operates from the micro-scale of the recycling of the ancestors’ material, up to the macro-scale of the landscape.

It is well known that there are direct relations between artefacts and landscapes in what concerns the materiality and mobility of objects. An additional relation between artefact and landscape may be the process of recycling. In many ways artefact and landscape can be considered as one aspect of material culture, perceived at a different scale, since both have the same materiality and suffer the same process of reutilisation.

This book invites archaeologists to approach the significant process of recycling within the archaeological record at two different levels: of artefacts and of landscape.

The 18th annual meeting of the Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology (SOMA) was held in Wrocław-Poland, 24th to 26th April 2014.

Since prehistoric times the Mediterranean has acted as a stage for intense interactions between groups inhabiting regions that are now studied mainly within various sub-fields of ancient studies. In recent years, however, the development of research techniques and analytical models of archaeological evidence have identified similar historical paths that are similar, if not, in some cases, common to these disparate areas of the ancient world from West (Iberian peninsula) to East (Anatolia and Levant), from North (Europe, Black Sea Coast) to South (Maghreb and Egypt).

The 18th SOMA provided a forum for presentations related to the above-mentioned topics, as well as general themes such as the role of the sea, trade, colonization, even piracy, using archaeological data collected within contexts associated with the Mediterranean Basin and the area referred to as the Ancient Near East, ranging chronologically from the Prehistoric to Medieval periods. This current volume contains 22 papers selected from the 90 presented.

The Archaeology of Time TravelExperiencing the Past in the 21st Century edited by Bodil Petersson and Cornelius Holtorf. viii+318 pages; illustrated throughout in colour and black & white. 303 2017. Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781784915001. £38.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784915018.

To Download the complete volume scroll down past the contents list, right-click "Download PDF" and save target file to your computer. Individual chapters can be downloaded by clicking on the entry in the contents listing below. The paperback edition can be ordered via the green buttons at the bottom of the page.

This volume explores the relevance of time travel as a characteristic contemporary way to approach the past. If reality is defined as the sum of human experiences and social practices, all reality is partly virtual, and all experienced and practiced time travel is real. In that sense, time travel experiences are not necessarily purely imaginary. Time travel experiences and associated social practices have become ubiquitous and popular, increasingly replacing more knowledge-orientated and critical approaches to the past. Papers discuss the implications and problems associated with the ubiquity and popularity of time travelling and whether time travel is inherently conservative because of its escapist tendencies, or whether it might instead be considered as a fulfilment of the contemporary Experience or Dream Society. Whatever position one may take, time travel is a legitimate and timely object of study and critique because it represents a particularly significant way to bring the past back to life in the present.

Eastern Sudan in its SettingThe archaeology of a region far from the Nile Valley by Andrea Manzo. viii+82 pages; illustrated throughout with 38 colour plates. 24 2017 Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 94. Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781784915582. £25.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784915599.

Eastern Sudan, like other regions far away from the Nile valley, has often been overlooked historically on account of a kind of prejudice towards areas lacking in monumental or urban remains or evidence of any literary production. Despite the relevance of the deserts and marginal areas becoming increasingly evident in the last year or so, in Sudan only a few research projects have been conducted in these regions. The ongoing research project in Eastern Sudan by the University ‘L’Orientale’ has provided a preliminary reconstruction of the history of the region from c. 6000 BC to AD 1500. This publication outlines this reconstruction and also considers the more general setting known for the other regions of northeastern Africa. Several issues remain to be clarified and understanding of some phases is still limited, nevertheless it can be safely stated that Eastern Sudan, was in ancient times, as it is now, a crossroads between the Nile basin, Eastern Desert, the Ethio-Eritrean highlands and the Red Sea, represented a crucial region in several respects: the spread of domestic crops and animals towards the Ethio-Eritrean highlands, the spread of the Sahelian crops towards India via the Red Sea and Arabia, as well as the long-distance trade network characterizing northeastern Africa in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.

Access Archaeology:This imprint is designed to make archaeological research accessible to all and to present a low-cost (or no-cost) publishing solution for academics from all over the world. Material ranges from theses, conference proceedings, catalogues of archaeological material, excavation reports and beyond. We provide type-setting guidance and templates for authors to prepare material themselves designed to be made available for free online via our Open Access platform and to supply in-print to libraries and academics worldwide at a reasonable price point. Click here to learn more about publishing in Access Archaeology.

Croatia at the Crossroads: A consideration of archaeological and historical connectivityProceedings of conference held at Europe House, Smith Square, London, 24–25 June 2013 to mark the accession of Croatia to the European Union edited by David Davison, Vince Gaffney, Preston Miracle and Jo Sofaer. iv+264 pages; illustrated throughout in colour and black & white. 2016 . Available both in printed and e-versions. Printed ISBN 9781784915308. £40.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784915315. £15.83 (Exc. VAT) Institutional Price £40.00 (Exc. UK VAT)

Croatia has a unique geographical and historical position within Europe, bridging central and south-east Europe. From the Pannonian Plain to the southern Adriatic maritime landscape, interconnectedness flows through Croatia’s history. This dynamic past is increasingly being reflected upon by a new and exciting generation of Croatian scholars who are firmly embedded within a strong national tradition of archaeology but who also look outward to draw insights into the nature of material culture they encounter in Croatia and Croatian identity itself.

Croatia at the Crossroads (24-25 June, Europe House, London) provided the opportunity to reflect upon such interconnectedness and Croatia’s historic place within Europe. This event typified the desire of Croatian archaeologists to engage with such matters on an international level and to situate their scholarship within broader regional dynamics. Following the foundation of the new Croatian state, the opportunities for new forms of engagement have grown. This has stimulated thinking regarding both approaches to archaeology and the potential cultural cross-fertilisation that has resulted in Croatia’s rich archaeological and historical record. This has led to in new, exciting understandings of archaeological material, and this was revealed in contributions to the Croatia at the Crossroads conference.

The papers published here arise from the exceptionally interesting presentations and discussions held in London at the conference. Each of them takes Croatia’s particular interconnectedness in terms of social and cultural relationships with the wider region as the starting point for exploring issues across a broad chronological range, from human origins to modernity. Within this, contributors pick up on a variety of different fields of interconnectedness and forms of interaction including biological, cultural, religious, military, trade, craft and maritime relationships. In many ways, these papers represent opening conversations that explore ways of thinking about new and established data sets that are entering Croatian scholarship for the first time. They also act as a set of complementary discussions that transcend traditional period and national boundaries. We hope that by bringing them together the volume will provide an insight into current trends in Croatian archaeology and stimulate fruitful discussions regarding future directions.

Rather than considering the myths supposedly depicted in the world’s rock art, this book examines the myths archaeologists and others have created about the meanings and significance of rock art. This vast body of opinions dominates our concepts of the principal surviving cultural manifestations of early worldviews. Here these constructs are subjected to detailed analysis and are found to consist largely of misinterpretations. From the misidentification of natural rock markings as rock art to mistaken interpretations, from sensationalist claims to pareidolic elucidations of iconographies, the book presents numerous examples of myths researchers have created about pre-Historic ‘art’. The claims about a connection between rock art and the neuropathologies of its producers are assessed, and the neuroscience of rock art interpretation is reviewed. The book presents a comprehensive catalogue of falsities claimed about palaeoart, and it endeavours to explain how these arose, and how they can be guarded against by recourse to basic principles of science. It therefore represents a key resource in the scientific study of rock art.

About the Author:Robert G. Bednarik is the Convener and Editor-in-Chief of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations and is affiliated with Hebei Normal University, China. His principal research interests are the origins of the human ability to create constructs of reality, the evolution of humans, and in a variety of fields providing supplementary information in that quest, including the world’s rock art. He has produced more than 1350 academic publications.

This meticulous investigation, based around a famous rock image, the ‘White Lady’, makes it possible to take stock of the mythical presuppositions that infuse a great deal of scientific research, especially in the case of rock art studies. It also highlights the existence of some surprising bridges between scholarly works and literary or artistic productions (novels, films, comic strips, adventure tales).

The examination of the abbé Breuil’s archives and correspondence shows that the primary motivation of the work he carried out in southern Africa like that of his pupil Henri Lhote in the Tassili was the search for ancient, vanished ‘white’ colonies which were established, in prehistory, in the heart of the dark continent. Both Breuil and Lhote found paintings on African rocks that, in their view, depicted ‘white women’ who were immediately interpreted as goddesses or queens of the ancient kingdoms of which they believed they had found the vestiges. In doing this, they were reviving and nourishing two myths at the same time: that of a Saharan Atlantis for Henri Lhote and, for the abbé, that of the identification of the great ruins of Zimbabwe with the mythical city of Ophir from which, according to the Bible, King Solomon derived his fabulous wealth.

With hindsight we can now see very clearly that their theories were merely a clumsy reflection of the ideas of their time, particularly in the colonial context of the Sahara and in the apartheid of South Africa. Without their knowledge, these two scholars’ scientific production was used to justify the white presence in Africa, and it was widely manipulated to that end. And yet recent studies have demonstrated that the ‘White Lady’ who so fascinated the abbé Breuil was in reality neither white nor even a woman. One question remains: if such an interpenetration of science and myth in the service of politics was possible in the mid-20th century, could it happen today?

The present book aims to study the use of lithic raw materials on the coast of the San Matías gulf (Río Negro, Argentina) during the middle and late Holocene. The understanding of this aspect of human group technology is of fundamental importance as the main archaeological materials recovered at the surface sites of the study area are lithic artefacts made from different types of rock. Thus, understanding how these were selected, reduced and finally discarded will contribute to the understanding of the way of life of the hunter-gatherer groups that inhabited the area during this period.

Access Archaeology:This imprint is designed to make archaeological research accessible to all and to present a low-cost (or no-cost) publishing solution for academics from all over the world. Material ranges from theses, conference proceedings, catalogues of archaeological material, excavation reports and beyond. We provide type-setting guidance and templates for authors to prepare material themselves designed to be made available for free online via our Open Access platform and to supply in-print to libraries and academics worldwide at a reasonable price point. Click here to learn more about publishing in Access Archaeology.

The Ouse valley, East Sussex, is a key communication route from the Channel coast, via the Downs (and the historic county town of Lewes), to the wide expanse of the Weald. It traverses and encompasses landscapes and archaeological sites of both regional and national importance – all connected by the river Ouse and its valley. This is the first review of the archaeology of this important landscape – from Palaeolithic to medieval times by contributors all routed in the archaeology of Sussex. Binding together the archaeology is a review of the geoarchaeology and palaeo-environment following which the chapters document the collective archaeology and potential from the Palaeolithic of Boxgrove vs Piltdown, via Mesolithic archaeology from the textbook excavations of Grahame Clark to recent 21st century investigations. Monuments of causewayed enclosures, long barrows and round barrows represent some of the Neolithic and Bronze Age evidence with some extraordinary finds recorded in the Bronze Age. From hillforts and villas, to medieval rural and urban excavation; the Ouse valley represents a microcosm of the wider region, the contributions collectively reveal the importance and significance of this valley to the development of landscape history and society of a quintessential English county. The narrative concludes with the first detailed research agenda for the Ouse valley.

This volume presents the long history of Syria through a jouney of the most important and recently-excavated archaeological sites. The sites cover over 1.8 million years and all regions in Syria; 110 academics have contributed information on 103 excavations for this volume. Based on these contributions the volume offers a detailed summary of the history of Syria, a history as important as any in terms of the development of human society. It is hoped that this knowledge will offer not only an increased understanding of the country but also act as a deterrent to the destruction of Syrian cultural heritage and facilitate the protection of Syrian sites.

Reviews:

'When Syria's magnificent cultural heritage came under threat, editors Kanjou and Tsuneki mobilised more than 110 international academics, working in all regions of the country, to produce this exhaustive reference book. ...[A] wonderful source to be endlessly mined by scholars and enthusiasts alike.' - Nicholas Bartos (Current World Archaeology, Issue #84, 2017)

Kurdistan is home to some of the most important archaeological sites in the world, ranging from the Stone Age to the most recent past. While in earlier decades this exceptional potential did not receive the degree of attention which it merited, the past ten years has seen a burgeoning of cuttingedge archaeological field projects across the region. This volume, the outcome of a conference held at the University of Athens in November 2013, presents the results of this research. For the first time the archaeological inventory of the region is being systematically documented, laying the foundations for intensive study of the region’s settlement history. At the same time the area has seen a flourishing of excavations investigating every phase of human occupation. Together these endeavours are generating basic new data which is leading to a new understanding of the arrival of mankind, the development of agriculture, the emergence of cities, the evolution of complex societies and the forging of the great empires in this crucible of mankind.

About the Editors:Dr. Konstantinos Kopanias studied at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Paris- Lodron University of Salzburg and the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Athens, as adjunct faculty at the University of Crete and as an Allgemeiner Referent at the German Archaeological Institute in Athens. He works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Athens for the subject of Ancient Civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean. Since 2011 he is the director of the excavation of the University of Athens in Tell Nader and Tell Baqrta in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. He has coorganized several international conferences and published extensively on various aspects of the archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.

Dr. John MacGinnis did both his degree and his PhD at Cambridge University and is a specialist in the archaeology and inscriptions of ancient Babylonia and Assyria, on which he has published extensively. He has worked on sites across the middle east, including Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Turkey. For fifteen years he was a field director at the site of Ziyaret Tepe, the ancient Assyrian provincial capital of Tušhan. He has worked on many sites in Iraq, particularly in Iraqi Kurdistan, and has since 2011 been Archaeological Advisor to the High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalisation. He is currently based at the British Museum as Lead Archaeologist in a training scheme for archaeologists from across the whole of Iraq and is also a Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

This is the fifth volume in the series Rock Art Studies: News of the World. Like the previous editions, it covers rock art research and management across the globe over a five-year period, in this case the years 2010 to 2014 inclusive. The current volume once again shows the wide variety of approaches that have been taken in different parts of the world, although one constant has been the impact of new techniques of recording rock art. This is especially evident in the realm of computer enhancement of the frequently faded and weathered rock imagery that is the subject of our study. As has been the case in past volumes, this collection of papers includes all of the latest discoveries, including in areas hitherto not known to contain rock art. The latest dating research reported in this fifth volume, sometimes returning surprisingly early results, serves to extend our knowledge of the age of rock art as well as highlight the limits of current models for its development around the world.

Post-Palaeolithic Filiform Rock Art in Western EuropeProceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September 2014, Burgos, Spain) Volume 10/Session A18b edited by Fernando Coimbra and Umberto Sansoni. vi+88 pages; illustrated throughout in black and white. 6 papers in English, 1 in French, all papers with abstracts in English and French. 235 2016. Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781784913687. £24.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784913687.

Filiform rock art appears as a spontaneous technique, more simple and immediate than pecking, good either for autonomous strands of expression, or for sketches and first drafts regarding works of painting or pecking. According to the order of presentation of the session’s papers during the XVII IUPPS (UISPP) Conference in Burgos, the articles published here are the following: Late prehistoric incised rock art in southern Europe: a contribution for its typology, by Fernando A. Coimbra, where the author presents a preliminary typology of this kind of rock art, divided in two groups (geometric and figurative), approaching not only common themes to several countries, but also some examples that have only a regional character; Filiform rock art in mount Bego (Tende, Maritime Alps, France), by Nicoletta Bianchi, which analyses some cases where pecked carvings overlap filiforms, therefore pre-dating pecked engravings and studies the interaction of the two carvings tradition; Filiform figures in the rock art of Valcamonica from Prehistory to the Roman age, by Umberto Sansoni, Cinzia Bettineschi and Silvana Gavaldo, that provides a general corpus of the figurative incised rock art of Valcamonica with a quantitative and qualitative approach, by considering the typological variety, the long-lasting chronological dating and the strong relation with the local pecked rock art of the Camunian filiforms; Threadlike engravings of historical period on the rocks and plaster of churches and civic buildings. Some comparisons and proposals of interpretation, by Federico Troletti, which presents the incised engravings exclusively of historical time located in some sites of Valcamonica – the area of Campanine di Cimbergo and Monticolo di Darfo; The rock art from Figueiredo (Sertã, Portugal): typology, parallels and chronology, by Fernando A. Coimbra and Sara Garcês, focusing vi on the description of the engravings from three carved rocks with incised motives from the place of Figueiredo, in central Portugal, which were studied during different fieldworks. Two other papers of researchers that couldn’t attend the Conference were also presented: The filiform rock art from Kosovo, by Shemsi Krasniqi, which presents recent findings from Kosovo with a similar typology of figures from other European countries; The filiform rock engravings of the Parete Manzi of Montelapiano (Chieti, Italy), by Tomaso Di Fraia, which analyses the problematic of incised rock art from a rock shelter in the centre of Italy.

As part of a series of research projects on the Archaeology of hunter-gatherers societies in the Southern Pampean Hills this presents, among other things, the study of various aspects of the organization of lithic technology and strategies for the use of lithic resources by prehistoric populations. This is in order to understand the social aspects that allow us to recognize and describe habitus or ways of doing things. In this book we studied lithic assemblages, in the manner described above from stratigraphic levels of the Alero Deodoro Roca (Deodoro Roca Rockshelter) comprising chronologies between ca. 3000 years BP to ca. 3600 years BP. We propose that behind the technical movements, organization of the production, distribution of activities in space, the selection of raw materials and any other technological activity, there are people and groups who make decisions based on the context, needs, history and knowledge. We ask ourselves: What affected material selection for the production of stone tools rocks? Was there a differential selection depending on the desired end product? And if so, was it different in diachronic moments? What techniques were used in the production of what instruments? What productive activities were conducted in Alero Deodoro Roca and which were not? What role did the tools produced have?

This study aims to produce relevant and new information that expands our knowledge of technological strategies used by the human groups in order to compare them with those produced in other areas of the Sierras. It will contribute to a process of constructing knowledge about hunter-gatherers of the valleys of Cordoba province, by studying lithic technology and therefore raising new questions for further studies.

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Water as a morphogen in landscapes/L’eau comme morphogène dans les paysagesProceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September 2014, Burgos, Spain) Volume 4/Session A14 edited by Sandrine Robert and Benoit Sittler. viii+104 pages; illustrated throughout in black and white. Papers in English and French. Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781784912871. £26.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784912888.

These proceedings include eight presentations. Two of them focus on the role played by the river axes and the geography of river basins as factors of circulation and settlement of Palaeolithic hunterviii gatherers on the European scale (Francois Djindjian) and in the surroundings of the Jura Mountains (Gérald Bereiziat and Harald Floss). José Javier Piña Abellán describes how the central valley of the River Jabalón (Ciudad Real, Spain) was peopled in the course of the second millennium B.C., and how the inhabitants still maintain a close link to the hydrography. Frederic Cruz and Christophe Petit provide new insights into the organization of the princely residences’ territories of the late Hallstatt era in the North-Western region of the Alps, taking into account their relationship to the environment, and especially the distance from the valleys. Ana Lucia Herberts documents how river crossings and related drainage structures played a crucial role in setting cattle trails in Brazil to drive the cattle from their pasture lands to the major market places in remote cities. A 3-D modelling using LiDAR altimetry has been used by Sabine Schellberg, Benoît Sittler, and Werner Konold to reconstruct water meadows that were used in historical times in the upper Rhine Valley. In their paper, Sandrine Robert and Hélène Noizet develop, as an example illustrating resilience, how an ancient meander of the River Seine, which was filled in Antiquity, still dictates the layout of the network of the streets of Paris. Lastly, Martin Orgaz and Norma Ratto addressed the social construction of landscapes by relating Inca sites to the Tinogasta region (Catamarca, Argentina) rivers whose visual features (the colour red) may be regarded as a factor that governed the selection of sites.

The only certainty in fact is our Past. It is undoubted that it happened, it is undoubted that its consequences are in place today, it is undoubted that it is affecting persons, social groups or larger structures in some ways also when it is disregarded. The help of specialists from different Countries and the exchange of opinions with other colleagues from other fields and/or organizations is then needed in order to: discuss the reasons and possibilities for preservation and use of Sites, Monuments and Museums; let the management of Rock Art Sites and Parks, Prehistoric excavations, Museums and Interpretations Centres and related structures open to the public to be made according to criteria agreed at an International level, both in normal and critical conditions; enhance standards in preserving, communicating and using Sites, Monuments and Museums; involve the public and diffuse awareness; analyse tourism benefits and risks at these destinations; introduce new opportunities for jobs and training; develop networks on these topics in connection with other specialized Organizations.

This session aimed to ask: what is your experience? Which problems would you like to address? What solutions can be considered?

This volume brings together presentations from two sessions organized for the XVII World UISPP Conference that was held from 1-7 September 2014 in Burgos (Spain). The sessions are: The scientific value of 3D archaeology, organised by Hans Kamermans, Chiara Piccoli and Roberto Scopigno, and Detecting the Landscape(s) – Remote Sensing Techniques from Research to Heritage Management, organised by Axel Posluschny and Wieke de Neef. The common thread amongst the papers presented here is the application of digital recording techniques to enhance the documentation and analysis of the spatial component intrinsically present in archaeological data. For a long time the capturing of the third dimension, the depth, the height or z-coordinate, was problematic. Traditionally, excavation plans and sections were documented in two dimensions. Objects were also recorded in two dimensions, often from different angles. Remote sensing images like aerial photographs were represented as flat surfaces. Although depth could be visualized with techniques such as stereoscopes, analysis of relief was troublesome. All this changed at the end of the last century with the introduction of computer based digitization technologies, 3D software, and digital near-surface sampling devices. The spatial properties of the multi-scale archaeological dataset can now be accurately recorded, analysed and presented. Relationships between artefacts can be clarified by visualizing the records in a three dimensional space, computer-based simulations can be made to test hypotheses on the past use of space, remote sensing techniques help in detecting previously hidden features of landscapes, thus shedding light on bygone land uses.

Argonauts of the Stone AgeEarly maritime activity from the first migrations from Africa to the end of the Neolithic by Andrzej Pydyn. viii+255 pages; illustrated throughout in black & white with 11 colour plates. 219 2016. ISBN 9781784911430. £36.00 (No VAT).

This is an important book. Too often in the past archaeologists have ignored or underestimated sea travel in early prehistory but the evidence has been growing and now it is presented to us in full in this thought provoking study. No longer can those interested in the human achievement neglect to take into account the astonishing achievements of our palaeolithic, mesolithic and neolithic ancestors.

This book gives a full account of stone age seafaring presenting the archaeological evidence in the context of the changing world environment and uses ethnographic sources to broaden the readers understanding of the worlds earliest sea craft. It is essential reading for all concerned to understand the human condition. – Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, Oxford

The book is a comprehensive study of early navigation and its place in the development of human culture from the earliest times to the late Stone Age. This subject is very timely in light of increasing archaeological and palaeoanthropological evidence that the maritime environment had been mastered in prehistory. As the author rightly points out at the beginning of his book, the maritime environment can no longer be marginalised when portraying both hunter-gatherer and early agrarian prehistoric communities.

The book is a valuable and inspiring work on a subject which had hitherto not enjoyed such in-depth treatment. It greatly enhances our perception of the beginnings of human culture and enriches it with comprehensive, convincing arguments that the maritime environment had been mastered by early humans. I congratulate the author on the effect he has achieved and on unearthing so many chronologically, geographically and thematically diverse sources. – Prof. Paweł Valde-Nowak, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

The title of the book intrigues the reader and promises a fascinating read about issues approached from an innovatively broad perspective. Both the global territorial scope and the chronological range covering almost two million years of human cultural development are worthy of note. What we have here is an aspect of human activity which is often neglected and marginalised in scientific research, which is that directly related to the sea. The fact that up to 90% of Pleistocene coasts, which were after all heavily populated in the Stone Age, have been flooded in modern times is not conducive to large-scale research, as underlined by the author in the Introduction.

The beginnings of human activity on the high seas are the subject of research in numerous scientific disciplines, all of which are discussed here. In writing this book the author has drawn on an exceptionally wide range of literature, mostly in English, owing to which the author’s own views, as well as those of other researchers whom he cites, are credible and convincing. – Dr hab. Krzysztof Cyrek, professor of Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń

Reviews

‘…Pydyn makes a compelling case that pre-Homo sapiens may have utilized water transport technology. Even the use of natural floats was perhaps “culturally enriched,” meaning that our ancestors consciously affected the direction of drifting or floating. He also argues that studies of early maritime activity have demonstrated the research potential of the continental shelf, because many Paleolithic and Neolithic sites are likely underwater… Argonauts of the Stone Age is a well-illustrated and engaging addition to the recent volumes on early seafaring and maritime activities.’ – Katelyn Dibenedetto, University of Nevada (Journal Of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology And Heritage Studies, Vol 5, Nos 3-4, 2017)

20% OFF: Giants in the Landscape: Monumentality and Territories in the European NeolithicProceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September, Burgos, Spain): Volume 3 / Session A25d edited by Vincent Ard and Lucile Pillot. vi+94 pages; illustrated throughout in black and white. 214 2016. Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781784912857. £20.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784912864.

Spotlight promotion: 20% off select 'death and burial' titles. RRP: £26. Offer Price:
£20. Offer ends 31/03/2018. In many European areas, the Neolithic period corresponds to the development of architectural monumentality which left important marks in the landscape, as well as the land clearing and the cultivation by the first agro-pastoral societies.

This volume presents proceedings from the session ‘Monumentality and territory: relationship between enclosures and necropolis in the European Neolithic’, part of the XVII World UISPP Congress, held in Burgos (Spain), the 4th September 2014. The session considered the various manifestations of the relationship between Neolithic enclosures and tombs in different contexts of Europe, notably through spatial analysis; the concept of landscape appropriation, combining domestic, symbolic, economic or natural spaces; and the patterns of territorial organization, in which enclosures and tombs have a fundamental role in some Neolithic contexts.

The theme of the symposium is the archaeology of earthen architecture in pre- and protohistoric cultures, with an emphasis on constructive techniques and systems, and diachronic changes in those aspects. The main interest is in monumental architecture (not domestic), where it is better possible to appreciate the building strategies that show raw earth to be as noble a material as stone or wood, but with its very own characteristics which required the development of original solutions and construction techniques. The scope on monumental buildings also allows analyzing the political, social and economical factors that made such architecture a recognized expression of societal values and political power.

This volume presents the proceedings of the session ‘Intellectual and Spiritual Expression of Non-literate Peoples’ part of the XVII World UISPP Congress, held in Burgos (Spain), the 4th September 2014. The session brought together experts from various disciplines to share experience and scientific approaches for a better understanding of human creativity and behaviour in prehistory.